The goal of this assignment is to use Tableau to explore choropleth maps.

Task

In your ICW groups, you will be using Tableau to create several choropleth maps based on US county data. I've written out most of the steps for you to perform along with questions to answer along the way.

Online Students: You should work through these steps on your own and then add your observations to your group's write-up.

Finish Up

Export an image -- do not take a screenshot, but export the image (Worksheet > Export > Image)

Q3: What is the county with the highest population? What is its population? Does this make sense?

Q4: Name 2 other high population counties. Do these make sense?

Generate Num Bachelor's Degrees Map

Load the Data

Duplicate the Population sheet

Add New Data Source

Choose the Education file

Do the same operations with the FIPS field as you did in the Population file

Link the Data Sources (population, education)

From the Data menu, choose Edit Relationships

Choose Custom

Add

FIPS and FIPS Code

Area_Name and Area name

Q5: Why were State and State already automatically linked and the others weren't?

Color the Map

Drag Bachelor's degree or higher, 2011-2015 to Color in the Marks window

Drag POP_ESTIMATE_2015 from the Population data to Detail in the Marks window

Rename the sheet "Num w/Bachelor's"

Export an image

Q6: Compare this map with the Population map. Are they different? Why or why not?

Generate Percentage Bachelor's Degrees Map

Duplicate the Num w/Bachelor's sheet

Drag Percent of adults with a bachelor's degree (2011-2015) to Color in the Marks window

Q7: Compare this map with the Population map. Are they different? Why or why not?

Q8: Compare this map with the Num w/Bachelor's map. Which map gives a better picture of the education level in the county? Why?

Experiment with colors

Experiment with the various color maps to highlight the counties that have a high percentage of Bachelor's degrees

Click on the Color icon and on Edit Colors

Rename the sheet "% w/Bachelor's"

Export an image

Q9: What did you observe about the different color maps? Which ones were most useful in highlighting extremes?

Data Exploration

Use the Quick Filters option to explore the data. Right-click on SUM(Percent... in the Marks window and choose Show Quick Filter

Q10: Describe one interesting observation or insight that you made while looking at this data. (Each group member can submit their own observation.)

Submission

Create your solution file, username1-username2-username3-ICW5.md, in the ICW5 Gitlab project. Be sure to use Markdown formatting to make your solution file easily readable.

This file should contain images of each of your maps and answers to the questions asked in the task section.

To include the images, you'll first need to upload them somewhere. You can either upload the images to your own webspace or put them in the imgs folder in ICW5 on gitlab. Make sure to name them with at least one of your usernames so that you don't conflict with other groups.

This is meant to be an in-class assignment, meaning that most of the work should be done in-class. There should be only a little discussion and write-up left to complete after class.